Discovery Command Validation for Rapid Network Failure Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing discovery processes in managed networks often fail due to misconfiguration, with failures going undetected for hours or days, leading to incomplete representation of devices or systems in the database.
Innovation Solution
A software-based validation tool tests discovery commands against a set of network addresses, providing rapid indications of success or failure, including unsupported commands, unreachable addresses, or authentication/authorization issues, before adding the pattern to automated discovery procedures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If discovery procedures are executed without prior validation, then automated discovery can proceed quickly, but failures due to misconfiguration remain undetected for hours or days
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a validation phase that executes discovery commands before the actual discovery procedure. This preliminary action tests the commands on target systems to verify syntax correctness, credential validity, and command support, ensuring that misconfigurations are detected and corrected before automated discovery runs, thus preventing hours or days of undetected failures
Solution Approach 2:
The validation process provides immediate feedback on discovery command correctness by executing test commands and analyzing results. This feedback mechanism identifies syntax errors, authentication failures, and unsupported commands, allowing users to correct misconfigurations before deploying automated discovery procedures, thereby improving reliability without significantly impacting overall productivity
2Reliability
If discovery commands are validated against multiple network addresses, then command correctness is confirmed with high confidence, but the validation process time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies validation to a representative subset of network addresses rather than exhaustively testing every single address. This partial action approach validates commands against enough diverse targets to confidently assess command correctness while avoiding the time penalty of complete exhaustive validation across all possible addresses
Solution Approach 2:
The validation process segments the network address space into manageable groups and validates discovery commands against representative addresses from each segment. This segmentation allows comprehensive coverage of different network configurations and address types while maintaining reasonable validation time by not testing every address individually
Data Source
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AI summary
Persistent storage may contain a list of discovery commands, the discovery commands respectively associated with lists of network addresses. A discovery validation application, when executed by one or more processors, may be configured to: read, from the persistent storage, the list of discovery commands and the lists of network addresses; for each discovery command in the list of discovery commands, transmit, by way of one or more proxy servers deployed external to the system, the discovery command to each network address in the respectively associated list of network addresses; receive, by way of the one or more proxy servers, discovery results respectively corresponding to each of the discovery commands that were transmitted, wherein the discovery results either indicate success or failure of the discovery commands; and write, to the persistent storage, the discovery results.